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Comic Book / Ultimate Marvel

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Not your daddy's Marvel Universe.

"Crime is becoming super-crime. Terrorism is becoming super-terrorism. Even the fattest, most stupid politician on Capitol Hill realizes that Son of Star Wars is going to be useless against the kind of problems America's really facing out there."
— Nick Fury, The Ultimates #2

The Ultimate Marvel (Earth-1610) comics started as an Adaptation Distillation of the classic stories of Marvel Comics, but set in a new continuity rather than the old Marvel Universe.

Back in the Turn of the Millennium, things were not going well for Marvel. New readers were forced to be up to date with a Back Story that goes back to the 1960s, with plots that started one way, were Retconned into something else later, and then retconned back so frequently that not even the writers themselves could keep track and caused frequent Continuity Snarls. The usual tropes of the superhero genre, such as the suits with bright colors, the characters with corny names and the general Fantasy Kitchen Sink had been a boom in the 1960s but did little to get new readers on board. Even more, The Dark Age of Comic Books was fading as well. As for bringing readers from other media, Marvel never had a good reputation for film adaptations at this point, and the acclaimed FOX animated series were followed by failures such as Spider-Man Unlimited and The Avengers: United They Stand. Not a good time.

The idea of the new project was to release comics based on the characters in their initial and basic premise, set in a more realistic world and with a down-to-earth approach. Unlike previous reboots, the comic started from scratch, and not as the result of some major event in the main universe (such as Heroes Reborn or Age of Apocalypse), and the original comics were not replaced but kept being published concurrently. Even more, this new universe would be off-limits to interdimensional crossovers. To ensure that the comic would have a fresh view, Joe Quesada hired Brian Michael Bendis, who had never worked for major publishers before, and started Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) in 2000. This comic was complemented by Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, which introduced some other characters reimagined in the Ultimate style.

Spider-Man was followed by the Ultimate X-Men (2001), by another rising talent, Mark Millar. As Millar had a superficial knowledge of the X-Men at the time, he based a large part of the initial design on the recent X-Men film, including the leather suits. It was another success, and Marvel proposed he write a spin-off comic based on Wolverine. Millar, however, preferred to make a reimagination of The Avengers, who were not among Marvel's highest-selling titles back then. This led to a conflict with Kurt Busiek, the ongoing writer of the Avengers, who felt that his work would be shadowed by the new comic, so Marvel tried to appease him by naming it The Ultimates instead of "Ultimate Avengers". The comic, focused on SHIELD spies and geopolitical crises, was an even greater success. Ultimate Fantastic Four was also released, to explore the science-fiction angle. Ultimate Marvel Team-up was canceled and the line moved to a new system of Worldbuilding: the four series mentioned were complemented by limited series that provided crossovers, introduced some special stand-alone story, or both.

Ultimatum was the first general Crisis Crossover of the line. It was meant to end with everybody dead, and be followed by a reboot; but it was later decided to keep it canon and continue the comics in its aftermath. It was not well received, as it caused the death of several important characters, including the four "sacred cows" of the X-Men (Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine and Cyclops). Although those characters had been dead before in the main comics, this was the first time that they were dead at the same time. This was followed by even bolder changes: Reed Richards has a Face–Heel Turn and turns into the new Big Bad, and Peter Parker is killed, so that a new guy, Miles Morales, becomes the new Spider-Man. Hickman's Ultimates were not as successful as Millar's, but were welcomed as a return of the Ultimate line to its former quality, and Miles Morales proved to be the highest success of the whole line. Morales had the first crossover of the Ultimate Marvel universe and the main Marvel universe in Spider-Men. As sales were declining there was a new Crisis Crossover, Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand, against the universe-displaced Galactus. The last three titles were Ultimate FF, Ultimate Spider-Man, and a new Ultimates team composed of street-level superheroes.

The universe ceased to be published in 2015 during the Secret Wars (2015) Crisis Crossover, following the arc of The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) about incursions between universes. The regular and the Ultimate universes clashed in the last incursion and were destroyed, while Dr. Doom got godlike powers and created a battle world with domains composed of the few realities he could save. One of those domains was the New York of both universes combined into a single one and with all their heroes (including duplicates). This was detailed in Ultimate End, the last Ultimate Marvel story. Miles Morales played an important role in the main story, and when the main universe was restored the Molecule Man made sure that his family and friends were "transplanted" to it as well. Although he was the most important one, with his own comic book and more key roles in subsequent crisis crossovers, Miles was but one of the several canon immigrants that were moved to the main universe; Jimmy Hudson was also incorporated in X-Men: Blue and The Maker would be a featured villain in several series.

Despite Secret Wars being billed as the end of the road for Ultimate Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis would later bring back the Ultimate Universe in his Spider-Men II miniseries, revealing that the universe was restored at some point. The fate of the Ultimate universe would become an ongoing subplot years later in Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2018) and Venom (Donny Cates). On February 22, 2023, it was announced that the Ultimate Universe would be revisited with Ultimate Invasion, a four-issue mini-series by Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch which sees the Ultimates clash with The Maker, Miles Morales and the Illuminati (Professor X, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, Prince Namor, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther), being billed as the start of "The Transformation of the Marvel Universe". Ultimate Invasion would then led to a new Ultimate Universe (2023) line being launched in 2023.

No relation to the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) cartoon show, though like most every other Marvel adaptation since the Turn of the Millennium, it incorporates a few Ultimate Marvel elements. Both of the Ultimate Universe Spider-Men would meet each other and join forces as part of the Spider-Verse event (in both comic and animated versions), however.

The major series in the Ultimate Marvel Universe are:

Phase 1note 

Phase 2note 

Phase 3note 

Phase 4note 

Other

Characters with their own pages:

General trope examples:

The Ultimate Marvel titles provide examples of:

  • Abled in the Adaptation: On one side, Mahr Vehl never got cancer. On the other hand, Tony Stark's damaged heart was replaced by a malignant brain tumor.
  • Aborted Arc: See here.
  • Action Dad
    • Howard Stark. Who, for the occasion, had come prepared with a 26-man SWAT team and a team of paramedics, all of which he had (presumably illegally) bribed to do his personal work. "Exactly where is my boy, and how many people do we have to kill to get to him?"
    • Wolverine, as seen in Ultimate Wolverine. He conceived Jimmy Hudson, and knew of his parenthood, in the middle of an adventure.
    • Captain America, for Red Skull
  • Action Girl: There are several: Spider-Woman, Black Cat, Jean Grey, Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Sue Storm, Wasp, Black Widow, Valkyrie, etc.
  • Adaptation Amalgamation: Ultimate Marvel adapts, reformulates, and mixes elements and stories from the long history of Marvel Comics. From the Fantastic Four to Cable, from Galactus to the Clone saga, anything is fair game.
  • Adaptational Badass: Has its own page
  • Adaptation Name Change: Has its own page.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Loki, usually portrayed as a wrinkled old man at the time, is here portrayed as looking like a handsome twenty-something.
    • Instead of his usual demonic manifestation, we only see Mephisto appear as a boyish-looking man sporting white hair with red streaks.
  • Adaptational Early Appearance
    • In the original comic Peter was initially alone, then Gwen Stacy was his love interest, and Mary Jane (introduced as a background character) was promoted to love interest. Here, she appears from the very beginning.
    • Colossus and Storm are founding members of the X-Men, and Wolverine joins shortly after. In the original run, they appeared decades after the creation of the team.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: has its own page.
  • Adaptational Ugliness
  • Adaptational Villainy:
    • Black Widow; in the comic, she starts out as a villain, but ends up having a Heel–Face Turn; in Ultimate, as a reversal, she starts as a heroine and turns out to be a spy for Russia, and the Liberators.
    • Reed Richards, who turns out to be the Ultimate Enemy in the trilogy of the same name. After "Cataclysm", he is making an attempt at reforming. Then New Avengers reveals he was faking it all along, and if anything only got worse.
    • John Wraith is the head of the Weapon X project, instead of one of its victims, and enjoys regularly abusing anyone he can find, teens included.
    • Longshot, Forge, and Multiple Man are willing members of the Brotherhood. In the classic universe, the three of them were either allies of the X-Men or even outright members of the team.
    • Jean DeWolff (spelt Jeanne DeWolfe) and Iron Fist work for the Kingpin, though the latter is being blackmailed into doing it.
    • Abraham Erskine, normally a genial and grandfatherly scientist, is a cold and remorseless man willing to experiment on unwilling African-American volunteers.
    • As a result of their bitter divorce, Moira MacTaggert was standoffish to Xavier and the X-Men. What places her here instead of in Adaptational Jerkass is because she's also the creator of the Banshee drug and even sided with Magneto.
  • Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The reason Mahr Vehl defected to Earth. He liked our stuff.
  • All According to Plan
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Uttered by Wolverine when Jean apologized to him. He had not really been captured by Weapon X as all the others, it was all part of a greater plan.
    • The Ultimates
      • Iron Man claims that he saw the events of Ultimates 2 coming (except the "Natasha betraying him" part) and figures it all worked out pretty well for him.
      • Hulk is trying to crack open the tank of Captain America? Excellent. Everything is going according to plan.
  • All There in the Manual: SHIELD was closed after Cataclysm, and Richards tried to seek redemption. However, in the first issue of Secret Wars, SHIELD is working again, Reed is evil again, and he had even joined a group of interdimensional villains. This was explained in Avengers vol. 5 #41, but not in any of the Ultimate comic books.
  • Always Someone Better
    • Spider-Men: Peter is annoyed that Miles Morales, a new and younger Spider-Man, has a costume way cooler than his.
    • The Ultimates
      • Played with. The Liberators were certainly trying for this. The Abomination was the Hulk with brains. Swarm summons armies of wasps. Crimson Dynamo has a bigger suit no doubt intended to be higher powered. etc. But the Ultimates counter by revealing upgrades or levels taken in badass. And in the case of the Abomination, being an intellectual isn't very useful when your best assets are your rage and your fists.
      • "Well, let's see how many super soldiers you create which don't involve getting big, getting small, or telling ants what to do through a helmet, jackass! Bruce Banner was twice the gentleman you'll always be and you know it, mister!"
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): The big problem of Sabertooth. Wolverine has his same powers, and will always be the better one. Even Wraith says so, even when Wolverine escaped and left him with that big facial scar, and Sabertooth volunteers to work in Weapon X.
  • Ambiguous Situation
    • Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra: Elektra overhears the cops saying that "Right now Ms. Beckerman can make the ID. Tomorrow might be another matter entirely". She asked for clarifications. But no, they do not think that she lies. They fear that, if she thinks about it and remembers Trey's contacts, she may withdraw her testimony to avoid trouble.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): High school student Peter Parker is bitten by an experimental spider in Oscorp, and gets superpowers. Aware of all this, Norman Osbourne tries to repeat the experiment on himself to get superpowers. He turns into a terrible menacing monster, who can fly and throw fireballs. First, he burns his house and kills his wife, and tries to kill his son Harry. Then he attacks the school, and Spider-Man fights him. But why did he attack the school? Was he trying to kill Harry again? Was he trying to kill Parker? Both? During the fight, he was limited to Hulk Speak and just growled "Parker" when he fought Spider-Man, so it was not easy to figure out his motives.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Sabertooth, who has just burnt the files with Wolverine's life before the mindwipe, boasts about the fun he had when he killed Logan's wife and little kid. Did he really do it? Or was he making it up to push his buttons, taking advantage that now Wolverine can never find out what actually happened, or if he really had a wife and/or son?
  • And This Is for...:
    • In Ultimate Comics Thor, Odin traps Loki into the Room Without Doors saying "And this is for Balder!"
    • In Ultimatum, Thor starts his attack on the legions of the undead crying "For Valkyrie!"
  • Anticlimax
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): Kraven the Hunter, although it comes immediately after a genuinely intense fight. Spider-Man has just beaten Doc Ock when Kraven arrives (after promising to kill Spidey on live television) and demands they fight. Spidey would rather Kraven helped him get someone out of a trashed car, has no idea what his deal is, and eventually gets fed up and one-shots him, declaring, "Huh. I thought he had superpowers or something. Showbiz phony." Kraven does gain superpowers later on. And is taken down, if anything, even swifter.
    • Ultimate FF: Sue's baby is born, Ben and Johnny are there with her... and a bizarre cyclops monster storms into the room.
    Johnny: Can't we have one major life event in this family without a villain-monster-whatever charging in to...?
  • Anyone Can Die: The most notable discrepancy the Ultimate continuity has from the regular Marvel universe (aside from most of its heroes being bigger jerks) is that the continuity isn't picky on which characters die, and not even recognizable or important characters are necessarily safe from being killed off for good. There is, however, a page with exceptions to this rule.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: There is some magic and supernatural content in the Ultimate Marvel universe, but not in the ludicrous amounts of the mainstream universe, and they are always met with skepticism.
  • Arc Words: "The next war will be a genetic one."
  • Are You Sure You Want to Do That?
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): The US government finally discovers the hidden base of Magneto and his terrorist group, the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy. All the NATO leaders agreed that it was the perfect chance to drop an army of Sentinels there. Xavier warned about Magneto's likely counter-attack and asks Bush if he realizes that by provoking Magneto this way he's endangering every man on the planet? Bush accepted that it's risky, but it's a chance that they couldn't let pass. It ends up pissing Magneto off enough he tries wiping out the entire world.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): After realizing the effects of the Oz on Peter Parker, Norman ordered his scientists to go to the next phase, by repeating the accident in a controlled environment on him. One of them asks in plain terms: "You, sir? You want to inject yourself with the Oz compound?" "Glad we understand each other".
  • Art Shift: There's a subtle style difference between Ultimate Marvel and other Marvel Comics. Back in 2002, Marvel ruled that comics should cease using all caps texts, and use sentence case instead. The rule was lifted two years later, but Ultimate Marvel kept it. The difference is exploited in crossovers, such as Secret Wars #1 or Spider-Men: scenes in the Ultimate Marvel universe have texts in sentence case, and scenes in other universes have all caps.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Infinity Gems eventually appeared in the lead-in to Cataclysm, though in the Ultimate Universe they're supposed to be a universal defense mechanism.
  • Artifact Title: Besides the Ultimates themselves, who have that name, the adjective "Ultimate" is used on the names of every comic and to call every character in a way that distinguishes him from the mainstream version. But only in the real world (fandom, interviews with creators, etc.). The word is seldomly used in the comics themselves. Neither Peter Parker nor Miles Morales are called "Ultimate Spider-Man", but simply "Spider-Man".
  • Asleep in Class
  • Avengers Assemble
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work
    • Ultimatum: Reed is fully aware of the things that Doom did, including his part in all this, but his moral code does not allow him to kill him. So he blames himself that he's partially responsible, because his unwillingness to kill caused all this. He confided all this with Ben, who then took it to himself to do what Reed did not dare to do, and kill Doom.
    • The Ultimates: The Ultimates recruit Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, from the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy. Nick Fury points that this is not the first that the security services made deals with terrorists.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Xavier loathes mutants taking advantage of their superior powers to impose their will of regular humans, no matter the circumstances. Wolverine, on the other hand, has no problem making a display of his powers to a mafia boss so he accepts to leave Colossus alone.
  • Badass in Distress
    • The Ultimates
      • Hulk is gaining the upper hand on Captain America, just in time for Thor to make his entrance.
      • Hawkeye manages to escape the blast of the Chitauri bomb at the office building, but now he's clinging from debris, with another soldier in his other hand, and four Chitauri about to shoot him. Black Widow made a super window jump, got the gun thrown from a helicopter above, and shot down the Chitauri, saving Hawkeye.
      • The Wasp, under medical care after Pym's wife-beating incident, did not join the Ultimates in Micronesia and stayed at the base. She was captured by the Chitauri when they made their move, so Black Widow had to rescue her when the team got back.
    • Ultimate FF: Sue can not defend herself from the alternate dimension cyclops monsters while she is giving birth, for obvious reasons. So everybody is out there to protect her.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001)
      • Nick Fury was captured in India. SHIELD had to ask Weapon X to send their agents to rescue him.
      • Also in the flashback in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Wolverine took Fury back to the base instead of killing him or leaving him to be killed by the Arabs.
  • Bait-and-Switch Gunshot
    • In Ultimate X-Men (2001) #12, right after Nightcrawler saves Colonel Wraith, the mutant-hating head of Weapon X, from an exploding helicopter, Wraith pulls out a gun to shoot him. The next panel shows a gun being fired, and in the next three, it becomes clear that Wraith was gunned down by Nick Fury, who had arrived with hundreds of SHIELD agents.
    • All-New Ultimates: One of the Skull Serpents was about to kill Terry. O'Reilly saved him in the nick of time.
  • Bald of Evil
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): Shawn, Norman Osbourne's hitman, is bald.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Misty Knight is attacked by a mystery hitman that shot the man she was investigating. This woman had no distinctive features except for her bald head and her tattoos.
  • Big Bad: Before "Ultimatum", Magneto was the closest contender for this title, being a threat to both the X-Men and the Ultimates, and one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s highest priority target.
    • After "Ultimate Enemy", the Maker (Reed Richards) becomes the main Big Bad of Ultimate Marvel.
    • Norman Osborn is this for most of Ultimate Spider-Man (2000).
  • Big Good: S.H.I.E.L.D. in general, Nick Fury in particular. S.H.I.E.L.D. is the Government Agency of Fiction, oversees all superhuman activities (heroes and villains alike), takes an active role in detaining superhuman criminals (they do not simply sit and wait while Holding Out for a Hero), and have effective Tailor-Made Prisons for superhuman criminals, which are almost never made of cardboard. In addition to that, Fury serves as a Parental Substitute for Parker, they paid the Hero Insurance of the X-Men for some time, they were indirectly the chiefs of the Fantastic Four (as they command the soldiers that command the Baxter Building), and the direct chiefs of the Ultimates. And, when S.H.I.E.L.D. was temporarily out of action during the civil war, Nick Fury served this role personally.
  • Blade Reflection
    • Ultimatum: Issue #5 starts with Wolverine ready to attack, and Magneto's face is reflected on his claws.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): At the start of issue 7, both Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are reflected in the eyes of each other.
  • Blatant Lies
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): The X-Men help Wolverine to escape from the Weapon-X soldiers, but Xavier and Cyclops are surprised that he stayed with them for so long after that, so they ask for his reasons. Wolverine has a flashback of Magneto hiring him to infiltrate the X-Men and kill Xavier... and replies "The scenery, bub. The scenery".
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
      • Lawson says that he created the suit as a hobby, based on Iron Man's tech. The invisibility is SHIELD's "light sensitivity mode", which he doesn't have clearance for, but he got it with Hollywood Hacking. Danvers doesn't buy it for a second. Then he says he's an alien.
      • Before joining the Ultimates' meeting and explaining who Misty Knight is, Tony was talking with some girl on the phone. "...I need to help out an old friend here. No, of course, she's not female. He. He's not female. Gotta go. Call later. Love you".
  • Boxed Crook
    • The team called the Avengers is basically this (not to be confused with the actual Avengers analog, The Ultimates). Their numbers include Hawkeye and Black Widow, neither of whom are squeaky clean, as well as former super-villain Red Wasp, and, at one point, the Punisher.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): All the mutants in Weapon X are forced to do what Wraith orders. This includes Wolverine, the X-Men (Cyclops, Jean, Beast, Iceman, Colossus, Storm), and the other mutants they had before capturing the X-Men (Rogue, Nightcrawler, Juggernaut). The only exception is Sabertooth, who is there by his own free will, as he simply enjoys killing.
  • Breaking the Fellowship: Happened to the X-Men and Fantastic Four in Ultimatum due to the losses each suffered in that event. The remaining X-Men eventually regrouped, especially after Spider-Man died, but the Four were cemented as broken up forever when Reed turned evil as the Maker. Still, they got one last reunion in the last issue of FF, when Sue gave birth to her son with Ben Grimm.
  • Bullying a Dragon
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000)
      • Flash challengers Peter to a fight, not knowing about his powers. Parker tries to elude him, catches his fist to stop his attack... and breaks his hand by accident. Doesn't stop Flash from continuing to harass and insult Peter at every opportunity afterward.
      • Uncle Ben is a tragic example, as he joked to the thief, who got angry and shot him.
    • Ultimatum
      • Xavier is alone in the mansion, with Magneto. A crippled man against a man with powers that rocked the whole planet. Nobody will come to help him, as in the White House. Nobody is keeping Magneto powerless, as in the Triskelion's cell. And still, Xavier remains Defiant to the End. What happens next is no surprise.
      • Dr. Strange thought that he could defeat Dormammu all by himself (remember that Ultimate Dr. Strange is not the "Sorcerer Supreme", but just a TV celebrity who knows a pair of spells and that's it). Again, what happens next is no surprise.
    • Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra: Elektra told Trey to return the folder to the student he was bullying. He replied, "Make me". We leave the rest to your imagination.
  • The Bus Came Back: The Ultimate universe was destroyed in 2015, during the Secret Wars crossover. It was restored in just 2 years, at the end of Spider-Men II.
  • The Cameo
  • Canon Discontinuity:
  • Canon Foreigner: Has its own page.
  • Canon Immigrant: So many examples that it has its own page
  • Cape Punk: One of the original goals of the Ultimate universe was to revitalize comic book continuity by updating it to the modern era. Much attention was given to the legal status, politics, popularity, and power limitations of superheroes. Furthermore, death was largely permanent as well as changes made to the status quo.
  • The Casanova
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Magneto gave Wolverine many missions of infiltration and killing in the past. He has a habit of holding the kill (and then escaping) when he meets a girl that he was wants to have sex with. Magneto got used to those "delays", and lets him be because he's still the best hitman at his disposal.
    • The Ultimates: Ultimate Tony Stark was even more than the original one (and still in the pre-MCU years). He gave it up temporarily when he got married to the Black Widow. She betrayed the team and tried to kill him, and died at the end of the adventure. Tony mourned her next to a window... and forgot it all when he saw a gorgeous blonde in the street. Time heals all wounds.
  • Cassandra Truth
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) it's a running gag that nobody believes Peter when he tells them he got his powers from a genetically modified spider.
    • Ultimate Origins: Magneto's mother tells him that he has a disease and that they were working on a cure. He kills her. But it turns out that she wasn't saying it because of Fantastic Racism, being a mutant is an actual disease after all.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
      • Played for drama. Xavier agrees that the vision of the aliens dying (that he got in a dream, as well as Jean) was not a made-up montage, but thought that it was just a visual metaphor of loneliness and abuse from some new mutant. It turns out that the visions were completely what they appeared to be.
      • Mahr Vehl telling Danvers and Fury he's on their side isn't believed at first, which he's indignant about.
    Mahr: Are you people so far gone you can't tell when someone's trying to help?
  • The Cavalry Arrives Late
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Jean asks the X-Men for help because Wolverine is killing Cyclops in the garden. They don't get there before he kills both of them. Fortunately, it's just a Danger Room simulation.
    • Ultimatum: Sue Storm and the Thing show up to fight Dormammu, right after he killed Dr. Strange.
  • Celebrity Paradox
    • Kong mentioned that he saw The Dark Knight several times, and Spider-Man once mentioned Batman. This means that the characters from DC Comics do exist, but as comic book characters (with film adaptations). But the regular Marvel universe exists somewhere in the multiverse, and they have met the DC characters as characters from an alternate dimension, so...
    • Hawkeye compared the Colonel's weapon with that of Darth Maul. So the Star Wars films, The Phantom Menace in particular, do exist. Hawkeye, who works for Nick Fury, must have flipped when he saw Mace Windu on screen. Of course, Nick himself thinks Samuel L. Jackson is the only man who should play him.
  • Civil War
    • The destruction of New York led to a new American Civil War, complete with a Divided States of America scenario worse than in the times of the Confederacy.
    • The mutants have their own one, between those who want to wage war against humans (led by Magneto) and those who simply want peace and be accepted as equals (led by Charles Xavier). Not even the death of Magneto and Xavier in Ultimatum ended this mutant conflict.
  • Clueless Mystery: The Ultimate Enemy trilogy. Spider-Man, the Baxter Building, Nick Fury, and a few others are attacked by aliens or strange tentacle monsters. No clues or hints are given, and there's no foreshadowing of any kind as to who might be behind this, until the end of the second half of the story, where it's revealed to be Reed Richards.
  • Come with Me If You Want to Live
    • Occurs in The Ultimates 3 #4.
    • Jean Grey says this to Liz Allen in Ultimate X-Men (2001) after the latter's mutant powers awaken. Derek Morgan and Jimmy Hudson lightly mock her for it.
    • Also done in Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) during the "Ultimatum" event by Kitty Pryde.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): The daughter of the president has been kidnapped by the Brotherhood. She is terrified. Then, another group of mutants kidnaps her as well. She's still terrified.
  • Comic Book Death: Averted; when you die in this universe, you die (with very few exceptions)
    • The exceptions are Norman Osborn (it is hinted that this may actually be his superpower), Peter Parker (same as Norman, but the full extent is unknown), Gwen Stacy, Psylocke (as a telepath, she can transport her consciousness into multiple hosts), Doctor Doom, (The Doom killed in ''Ultimatum'' was retconned to be an imposter), and Tony Stark (same deal as Psylocke, but could implant his consciousness into advanced technology. He then used the Infinity Gems to revive his body and implant his consciousness back in it). "Thunderbolt" Ross died in the second arc of X-Men and returned as a regular in Fantastic Four, his resurrection was simply handwaved as Waking Up at the Morgue off-panel.
  • Comic-Book Time
    • The Ultimate comics adopted comic book time from the beginning. To give an example all 200 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man pass before he dies a few days after his sixteenth birthday, which means that the entire Ultimate comics run including the appearance of the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the entire history of the Ultimates along with many crisis crossovers happen in a span of around 3 years or less.
    • It should be noted that at the beginning of the Ultimate line, Peter Parker is explictely stated to be fifteen. So all of his adventures from the spider bite up to his death happen in less than a year. Never mind that an issue of the story arc Hobgoblin (Ultimate Spider-Man #72 to 78) places that story 9 months after the bite and that there is a 6 months gap afterwards, following Ultimatum...
    • Vision makes things even more complicated. First, we had the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, the Ultimates appear in it, with Thor and the Black Widow among them. Ultimate Vision takes place immediately afterward. At the end of that story, the Vision is badly damaged, and self-repairs will take a month, so she stays with Sam during that time. By the time of The Ultimates: Last Stand, she has finished those repairs and heads to space once again. This means that most of the international conflict of The Ultimates 2 (if not the whole story), the robot doubles and the death of the twins in Ultimates 3, the Ultimatum wave, Reed Richards' descent to villainy, the death of Spider-Man, the new Spider-Man, the surge of New Tian, Richards' destruction of Europe, the Sentinel outbreak in the southern states, the blowing up of Washington DC and the new American Civil War, the Utopia mutant haven and its war with New Tian, and the thing with the infinity stones... all of that, took place within a single month. A. Single. Month.
  • Composite Character: Has its own page.
  • Continuity Snarl:
    • There are at least three different versions of Bolivar Trask, none of whom have anything in common with one another. One of them is a government-funded scientist and the creator of the Sentinels. Another is a corporate big-shot, with almost no actual operational knowledge of science, who is partially responsible for the origin of Venom, and the third is a scientist hired by the Fenris Twins to build Sentinels, before dying in an explosion.
    • The Silver Surfer first appears as a silent creature of the Gah-Lak-Tus swarm. A new one, closer to the original character, shows up in Ultimate Fantastic Four; Reed reasons that the swarm modeled its creatures after him. A third one, working as a herald and spokesman for the Watchers, does not seem to have a clear relation with either one.
    • It seems that Loeb forgot, in both Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, that Dr. Doom had been lost in another dimension. This was fixed in Ultimate FF, where Loeb's guy was retconned as an imposter—which itself caused one as the imposter was revealed to be Mary Storm, whom "Doom" called for in Ultimatum and attended Franklin Storm's funeral after she was supposedly killed.
    • The Kree were initially depicted as definitively not Human Aliens and required cosmetic surgery to appear human. During the Hunger mini, The Kree are consistently portrayed as always looking like humans, even in situations that don't necessitate it.
  • Covers Always Lie
    • An issue of Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) shows Spidey alongside Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Several members of The Ultimates do appear, but only for two pages, and Thor is not one of them. There is a major guest star, but it's Doctor Strange, who is not on the cover. Even though, again, it was drawn by the same guy who also penciled the comic itself. The cover was later used for the corresponding Ultimate Collection, without these characters appearing anywhere else in that volume.
    • Spider-Man Vol.2 #9 (the Miles Morales volume) has a pretty egregious one. As seen on this page, a cover may show a hero fighting a villain, only for the issue to only show the villain preparing to fight the hero and setting things up for a future issue, or for the issue to end right as they meet. As such, fans often expect this sort of thing, so if an actual fight doesn't occur in the issue between the hero and villain, they at least suspected it and aren't too disappointed. The cover to this issue? Miles desperately fighting Venom. Not only does Venom not appear in the issue at all (no fight, no setup for a future appearance, not even a single mention of him in the issue), but Spider-Man himself barely appears. It's an issue that focuses mostly on his supporting cast worrying about where he could be.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man 1 and 2 have Spider-Man swinging in the city, but Parker does not have the suit yet.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Ultimate Extinction #2 features Wolverine, who isn't in the comic.
  • Crapsack World: Amazingly, the Ultimate Marvel Universe is even more of one than the mainstream universe; as noted above, it has a Darker and Edgier approach, and, unlike the mainstream, you can't rely on cosmic schemes to come back to life after suffering a horrible death. With the exceptions of Thor and Spider-Man...
    • It's so bad that Galactus himself declares this universe is broken.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Spider-Ham arrives in the Ultimate universe and explains that the difference between the universes that survive and those that do not, is that the ones that survive are those where Reed Richards and Sue Storm have a son. Accepting that the fate of the universe requires her to have a son with the infamous Maker, Sue gets ready to forcibly extract seminal fluid from Richards and impregnate herself, but then she changes her mind and does that with her actual boyfriend, Ben Grimm. She thinks that this will work out just as fine. Well, there is no son of Storm and Richards in the Ultimate universe, the Secret Wars started, and the rest, as they say, is history.
  • Dark Action Girl: Elektra and Tigra.
  • Darker and Edgier: A lot of elements are this compared to the mainstream version of Marvel; most notable example include Hulk and Blob having cannibalistic tendencies, Ant-Man being a total jerk, Magneto being pure evil rather than a Well Intentioned Anti-Villain, several key characters dying (and unlike the mainstream, they are rarely, if ever, Back from the Dead)...
  • Death Is Cheap: Has its own page
  • Decoy Protagonist
    • The Ultimates: Ray Connor, the kid who takes up the Daredevil identity after the death of Matt Murdock in Ultimatum. We're given an issue dealing with his origin and background and the book makes it seem like he's being positioned as a major character in the mold of previous Legacy Characters...but then at the end of said issue, he gets bitten by a vampire.
    • Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: The role of Spider-Man in the Punisher and Daredevil arc is minimal. It may be argued that he's there just because he's supposed to be the protagonist because his role could have been completely avoided.
    • Spider-Men II: On paper, this is a team-up of both Spider-Men. Actually, it's the story of the adult Miles Morales, with both Spider-Men thrown there. They have little actual weight in the plot. They never even find out where the portal leads to, nor there is an eye-to-eye meeting of both Miles.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Has its own page.
  • Divided States of America: The main plot of the "Divided we fall" comics.
  • Downer Ending: Secret Wars begins with what little is left of SHIELD and the Ultimates at that point (Iron Man and Hawkeye) trying to deal with an Incursion with Earth-616. Since they're vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, they lose badly. And then the Maker blows up both realities anyway. And that's the end of Ultimate Marvel.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: One of the early stories in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up and the second arc of Ultimate X-Men (2001) featured Nick Fury... clean-shaven and with hair. Looking like Samuel L. Jackson doesn't happen until the beginning of The Ultimates.
  • Every Scar Has a Story
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Much of Wraith's anger against Wolverine is because of that big scar he left on his face.
    • The Ultimates: Captain America left a huge scar on Herr Kleiser's face with his shield. At one point he boasted that it had almost healed. Almost.
    • Spider-Men II: The adult Miles has a blind date with Barbara, who is surprised by his huge scar on the face. Wilson Fisk steps in to "salute" him and mentions that he got that scar while saving his life.
  • Evil Counterpart: The Brotherhood for the X-Men, the Liberators for the Ultimates, Venom for Spider-Man, and the zombie Fantastic Four for the Fantastic Four.
  • Fantastic Racism: Mankind still hates Mutants, with Ultimate X-Men beginning with Sentinels killing dozens of innocent Mutants, with no one batting an eyelash about it. The discrimination is arguably far worse than the prejudice shown in the mainstream universe, as mutants have been discriminated against to the point they can be murdered without legal reprisal and their legal status has been rendered nonexistent unless they follow inhumanly strict rules in a society that wants them dead or blames them for the events of "Ultimatum".
  • Flanderization: A major facet of the Ultimate Verse is that all the characters of the mainstream universe are presented in the Ultimate Verse with their worst vices and flaws amped up.
    • The Ultimates are basically the Avengers with their worst personal flaws made more evident and dangerous (i.e. Captain America's patriotism and Fish out of Temporal Water Angst, Iron Man's alcoholism and hedonism, Ant-Man and Wasp's abusive moments, Thor's God Complex, etc.) Nick Fury and SHIELD are even MORE callously manipulative and morally ambiguous in the Ultimate Verse.
    • The Ultimate X-Men amp up the Dysfunction Junction and flaws of the mainstream X-Men to toxic levels and the characters are barely able to work together and sometimes attempt to murder one another outright.
    • The Ultimate Fantastic have all their personal flaws made more evident (i.e. Reed Richard's callousness and obsession with science, Sue Storm's temper and violent outbursts, Johnny's idiot tendencies and foolhardiness, and Ben's suicidal depression and intense love for Sue)
  • First Law of Resurrection: Ultimate Marvel ended in 2015, with the destruction of the Ultimate universe in Secret Wars. However, Ultimate characters migrated to the Prime earth by the loads. And finally, in 2017 the Ultimate Universe was restored.
  • Full-Frontal Assault
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) loves this trope, though it usually tends to be out of necessity or accidental. For example, Sandman can't turn his clothes into sand, and Electro and the Hobgoblin burn right through their clothes.
    • The Ultimates: Only Jan's specially designed outfits can shrink with her. If she's in normal clothes and forced to use her powers, she ends up fighting naked. She doesn't seem to really care.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Wolverine during the Gulf War. He was treated as little more than a dangerous savage animal, so he did not get any clothes.
  • Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Stated as such by Nick Fury at the end of Ultimate Six. Outside of the Asgardians and the aliens, just about every existing superhuman can be traced back to military experiments in some way. Yes, including the mutants.
  • George Jetson Job Security
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): Kingpin, who had been taped killing someone, manages to have the criminal charges dropped because of legal technicalities. J. Jonah Jameson insists with his "Spider-Man is a menace" rants, and Parker asked: why does he bother so much with Spider-Man, but not the Kingpin? Jameson, who was not having a good day, fired him. He eventually re-hires him, after enduring a lot of "the kid has a point!" and "What the Hell, Hero?"
    • Ultimate Origins: The Watchers of the Universe show up at several locations. One of them is the Daily Bugle... and Jameson is firing his star reporter, Ben Urich, over a discussion.
  • Genre Savvy
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2000), Bolivar Trask demonstrates this when he asks if the stasis field in the lab he's in can contain Venom. When he's told that it can, he says that he's seen King Kong, and so will be leaving.
    • Ultimate Wolverine: When Wildchild finds Jimmy and Black Box, he realizes that they are "The Smart Guy" and the "Dumb Muscle", so he will take the smart one for interrogation and kill the muscle right there. And he's sure that Jimmy is dying to cry "over my dead body".
  • Godzilla Threshold
    • Hulk was used as such against the Chitauri, in the first arc of The Ultimates. Nick Fury liked the idea so much that he used him again in other crises, such as Ultimate Power, the attack of the Maker, the coming of Galactus, etc.
    • Ultimate X-Men: The US government agreed to cease using Sentinels, but gave them one last mission. Magneto's base was finally found, and that's too good an opportunity to pass up.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Reed figured out a way to hurt Gah Lak Tus, perhaps even kill it, but it's a crime against nature. The idea is to open a portal to a universe having its Big Bang, let it get out like a death ray, and attack Gah Lak Tus with it.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language/Gratuitous German: There are a few times, when, say, German doesn't get slaughtered that badly, but the rest of the time, any language besides English (German, Arabic, Hindi, French, Russian, etc.) gets mangled so badly, you can thank whatever deity you worship or not that you don't understand it.
  • Happily Adopted
    • Peter Parker's parents died years ago, so he was adopted by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and then just May when a burglar killed Ben. He is happy and fine with May. May is happy with Peter, too, but she is greatly troubled by the memory of all those people she has lost. So she also adopted Gwen Stacy (a teenager whose father was killed and whose mother ran away years ago). And, after the worldwide disaster of "Ultimatum", she also allowed Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake to stay in the house. And add Mary Jane, who was not legally part of the family but spent a lot of time with Peter anyway, and you get a full house.
    • Jimmy Hudson was conceived by Wolverine and Magda, but Wolverine gave him to the Hudson family. He thought that if he took him, he could either be a victim of some villain or turn out just like him. As seen in the Ultimate Wolverine miniseries, Jimmy thinks that Wolverine is his biological dad but his adjectiveless dad is James Hudson.
  • Heroic Sacrifice
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) does this with style, taking a bullet to the stomach meant for Ultimate Captain America, then racing back to rescue his friends and family from the escaped Ultimate Sinister Six before he finally succumbs to his wounds.
    • Ultimate Captain America sacrifices himself by slamming an airplane into Galactus during Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand.
    • Ultimatum: Yellowjacket gathers the Madrox dupes suicide bombing the Triskellion and takes them out to sea to save the rest of the Ultimates.
  • Historical Domain Character
  • Hope Spot
    • The Ultimates: Bruce Banner has faced trial for the 852 people he killed as Hulk, and waits the verdict. Fury shows up and says that he was acquitted since the other Ultimates testified on his behalf about how he saved the world. Fury gives him champagne so they can celebrate. But then... Bruce blacks out from the drugged champagne, and they take him and put him on an abandoned aircraft carrier next to a one-megaton nuclear bomb. Of course, if Fury had given the news directly, he risked Banner turning into Hulk right then and there.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001)
      • Nightcrawler does not say anything after being recaptured. Wraith then figures it out: he's thinking about teleporting to that plane that is passing in the sky. But he has exhausted himself during the escape (including his feat of teleporting alongside a snow vehicle), and can't do it. Wraith kicked him in the face and hauled him back inside the complex.
      • Iceman is having a Break the Cutie crisis, thinking that there is no hope for them that they will die there. Colossus then reminds him about Wolverine. He's still at large... and although he is the Token Evil Teammate, he had been tortured and abused by Weapon X for years, he escaped from them and found people (the X-Men) that treated him like a person, and now those people have also been kidnapped and tortured by Weapon X. Colossus is completely sure that he will come to the rescue... and then Sabertooth breaks those hopes: Wolverine has just been captured.
  • How We Got Here: Many comics start in the climax, and then jump back to some previous time, and narrate the story from that point on.
  • Humans Are Special: Nick Fury phrases it differently, but the point is the same. Humans can kick the crap out of anything.
  • Idealist vs. Pragmatist: Nick Fury often reacts to crisis with a pragmatic approach, has little concern for Collateral Damage and takes little issue with killing villains. The Ultimates usually have a similar perspective. Sometimes the plot justifies it by making the villain really powerful and leaving the heroes with no other options, and other times this leads to a conflict with idealistic heroes such as Spider-Man who try to Take a Third Option.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Nearly every series follows the title format of "Ultimate _____" (or, for a stretch, "Ultimate Comics: _____"), with a few variations like "Ultimatum" or "The Ultimates".
  • I Just Want to Be Special: The Ultimate version of The Defenders is made up of non-powered versions of Valkyrie, Luke Cage, Son Of Satan, and Whiz-Kid, as well as Hellcat and Nighthawk who were Badass Normal in the main universe, but not here. They claim to be experienced crimefighters, but are shown to just be this trope, and are thrilled when Hank Pym wants to join despite his pathetic fall from grace, just for the sake of having a member with actual powers. They're eventually given powers by Loki to help him steal Mjolnir.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Cannibalism is a surprisingly constant motif. Hulk is a cannibal and eats the Chitauri leader, Magneto makes offhand references to having once eaten humans and plans to keep humans as livestock in a Homo Superior World, and of course in Ultimatum, Blob eats the Wasp and in revenge, Giant-Man bites off the Blob's head.
  • Irony: For all of the hatred and Fantastic Racism for mutants (though Magneto does his level best to justify that fear), it's absolutely ironic because Homo Superior is exactly what it was created to be... homegrown super soldiers. Almost every Ultimate Marvel book has its roots in the American Government trying to (re)discover the secrets of the Super-Soldier serum used to create Captain America... yet a single rogue lab was able to leap ahead of OsCorp, Roxxon, and The Baxter Building by creating Homo Superior... the mutant race. True mutants did exist (like Wolverine or Apocalypse), but were exactly that - random genetic offshoots of humanity. When Wolverine was captured, his genetic code was promptly mapped and manipulated by Doctor Cornelius and used to create the X-Gene. When Nick Fury discovers the horrific laboratory, he orders all the scientists killed and their work erased so the word that Man created Mutant wouldn't spread. He was too late as Cornelius had already disseminated the X-Gene all over the world, creating the first mutant baby boom.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Nick Fury.
    Human Torch: So when you were running the whole world you just stole things off of anyone’s computer.
    Fury: No, I thought it was in the world’s best interest to have all this dangerous information in the laptop of a barely socially functional 18-year-old kid.
Human Torch: You make me sick.
Fury: And I was right.
  • Juxtaposed Halves Shot
    • An Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) picture shows a full-body picture of Spider-Man, except one half, is Peter Parker's Spidey, and the other half is Miles Morales's.
    • Ultimate Wolverine: The recap page has one with Wolverine and Jimmy. There is another between Jimmy and Quicksilver later on.
  • Kick the Dog
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001)'
      • Wraith and the Weapon X guys enjoy shooting Wolverine in his cell because with his healing factor he always gets better. They had once doused him with gasoline and set him alight, and he was still combat-ready for an operation two days later.
      • Magneto wants Cyclops to call him "father" when they are near Quicksilver.
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Zoe, that friend of Quicksilver that sells frozen yogurt. She had the Mothervine and he told her the trigger phrase, which gives her an uncontrollable and lethal mutation, just to show off the way Mothervine works.
  • Kid Hero: Both Spider-Men (Peter and Miles), the Fantastic Four, and many (not all) of the X-Men. Also Jessica Drew, Cloak & Dagger and Bombshell. Those last ones, along with Miles and Kitty Pryde, became the All-New Ultimates when the original team broke up after the fight against Galactus.
  • Kneel Before Zod
    • The Ultimates: Herr Kleiser has nearly defeated Captain America, and he wants him to say "I surrender, Herr Kleiser. Make it quick". Instead of that, it gives Cap the conviction to turn the tables on him and gain the upper hand. He points to the "A" in his mask and asked: "Surrender? SURRENDER?!! YOU THINK THIS LETTER ON MY HEAD STANDS FOR 'FRANCE'?"
    • Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra: An inverted case, as it is Elektra who captures and humiliates Trey, and forces him to kneel while he cries like a little girl.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): Shocker doesn't want to just have the money of the security van. He wants the officer to crawl over and give it to him. Then, Spider-Man takes him down.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler
    • "Ultimate Nightmare"'s ending revealed the coming of Galactus. It was a genuine surprise back then. Nowadays, it is sold alongside "Ultimate Secret" and "Ultimate Extinction" as the "Ultimate Galactus Trilogy", so there is no surprise at that point.
    • In Ultimatum the identity of the villain is not revealed until the end of the 1º issue. Nowadays, it is widely known that the villain is Magneto.
    • Similarly, the identity of the Ultimate Enemy is not revealed until the end of the second arc. Nowadays, people will get it precisely to read about Reed's descent into villainy.
  • Legacy Character
    • Peter Parker died fighting against the Green Goblin. Miles Morales became the new Spider-Man after that.
    • Rick Jones became the new Captain Marvel when the original died fighting against Galactus.
  • Light Is Not Good
    • Ultimate Wolverine: A politician salutes a girl he finds, who was actually a Mothervine subject. She starts attacking with a solid light.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: The "Silver wings" (based on Silver Surfer) look like angels and their bodies shine on their own. They are here to help Gah Lak Tus to destroy the planet.
    • The Ultimates: Gregory Stark, a blonde teetotaler man wearing white, the man is Tony's physical opposite. It's revealed that he has powers of his own that turn his white suit into a pure blinding light.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Nick Fury found something at the temple that gave a huge bright light. The satellite lost visual, Fury asked for reinforcements, and then was captured.
  • Mercy Kill
    • In Ultimate X-Men (2001), Wolverine does this for Jesse, a boy whose mutant power is to generate radiation that kills everyone around him. There are other factors at work, including the fact that the U.S. government had sent Wolverine to do this and how bad the truth would be for the mutant community, but it's presented as sparing a boy from a Fate Worse than Death.
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Zoe had to get one after her Mothervine mutation started.
  • Meta Origin: The Ultimate line simplifies many random elements by having many of the world's superheroes connected to Captain America's Super Serum in some form or another. The Hulk was accidentally created while Dr. Banner was trying to recreate the serum, Norman Osborn accidentally created Spider-Man while attempting the same thing, Weapon X and the entire mutant race were created as the Canadian response to the Serum, and so on.
  • Mission Control: Nick Fury plays this role during most of the Ultimate comics. In Ultimate FF, that role was played by Agent Coulson.
  • Monumental Damage:
    • New York is flooded at the beginning of "Ultimatum".
    • The X-Mansion is destroyed by Iceman after "Ulimatum".
    • The Baxter Building is utterly totaled at the beginning of Ultimate Enemy.
  • Motor Mouth
  • My God, What Have I Done?
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2000), Norman Osborn accidentally kills his son while in his crazy goblin form. When he changes back he has one of these and asks a nearby SHIELD Agent to kill him.
    • Ultimate Origins: Hulk attacks (and possibly kills) Richard and Mary Parker, but when he sees the helpless baby Peter Parker, he reverts back to Banner in shame.
    • Ultimatum: When Magneto realized that mutants are not the result of evolution, that he's a human being with powers, but a human being nonetheless. He falls down in horror at the things he had done in his pro-mutant crusade, such as moving the earth's axis.
  • Myth Arc: The numerous attempts at recreating the Super Soldier Serum and how it relates to almost all the characters.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
    • In the first issue of Ultimate X-Men (2001), Bobby uses his ice powers to save a large group of people from a falling sentinel. He gets a bottle thrown at his head for doing so since it just outed him as a mutant. Hell, the entire premise of X-Men in general is that they fight to save a world that hates and fears them, resulting in basically this.
      • This expands on Iceman's origin in the mainstream comics. Here young Bobby Drake is out on a date with a girl called Judy Harmon, when a local bully attacks and tries to drag her away. Bobby saves her by encasing said bully in ice, which leads Judy to reject Bobby as a monster. Also, soon afterward a group of locals forms a lynch mob and attack the Drakes' home.
    • During Ultimatum, a lot of the X-Men die to stop Magneto, and the ones who survived did just as much. Mutants were just as affected by the attacks as everyone else, and most tried to stop it. Afterward, mutants are being openly hunted by the government, the level of abuse they get has increased, and even though mutants like Kitty Pryde risked their lives to help the public during the attacks, her peers are all bullying her and even report her to the government which causes them to come looking for her.
    • Ultimate FF: By the time the team returns to earth, all the military is at the other side of the portal, aiming to them. They have to prove that they are themselves, and not doppelgangers from some alternate universe.
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
      • Captain Mahr Vehl stops the Kree killbot and saves the prototype of the ASIS... and gets locked in an interrogation chamber as a result, with plastic explosives strapped to his neck just in case he tries something.
      • Misty Knight is attacked in her own office by a Silver Wing, who wants to kill her to keep his existence a secret. She blows a fire extinguisher on him, and the explosion brings Captain America and the Falcon to the scene. They drive him away and try to detain her for the whole incident.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Like in the mainstream continuity, Abraham Erskine didn't keep enough notes about the process that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, was shot after the success, and so no more super-soldiers could be created. The difference is that the trope is fully reconstructed, and there were countless projects and attempts to reconstruct the super-soldier serum, which was in most origin stories and drove many of the actual stories (for example, the first arc of the Ultimates).
  • No-Sell
    • Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Misty Knight blows a fire extinguisher on the Silver Wing. He gets up as if that was nothing.
    • Ultimate Vision: Several planes fired atomic weapons to the Gah Lak Tus module. Its forcefield was barely scratched.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001)
      • Sabertooth defeated Storm and Beast without making a sweat when he entered the mansion.
      • Juggernaut defeated Colossus in seconds, off-panel.
  • Not Helping Your Case
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): The terrorist scientist that Jean has to kill. It's either him or Jean's boyfriend, so he had to really do a number to convince her. "I'm not an evil man. Yes, I've done evil things, but I'm just an ordinary human being like you are". And what is an ordinary man that does evil things... but an evil man? Yes, Jean chose Scott.
    • The Ultimates
      • Captain America wakes up from a forty-year nap in an iceberg, surrounded by armed soldiers, with Doctor Banner saying he's among friends. Not surprising then that Cap believes it's all a Nazi scheme and starts punching his way out.
      • Thor claims he's the actual god of thunder, and Loki's screwing with everyone's perceptions to make him look like a crazy person. Of course, he's saying stuff like "you have to believe me", and no one can actually see Loki (just that nice Doctor Golmen who insists Thor is his mentally ill brother.)
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The line's mission statement since Ultimatum, as opposed to mainstream Marvel's Status Quo Is God.
  • Oh, Crap!
    • In The Ultimates, Smug Snake Herr Kleiser seems to react this way every time he's caught flat-footed when something unexpected disrupts his plans. Which they do, spectacularly. Claiming to be the universal embodiment of order isn't always an advantage.
    • Magneto gets a really good one in Ultimate X-Men (2001): while he's taunting Colossus about how vulnerable his metal body is to his magnetic powers, Colossus is slowly breaking free, and though his taunts continue on, he still has this look in his eyes...
    • Ultimate Fantastic Four: The Skrull leader gains his powers by copying the abilities of any other mutant/metahuman in the area. At the end of an alternate universe arc, he gloats to a powerless Ben Grimm that the last Earthling aside from himself just died and Ben is now the last man alive. Ben responds by slowly taking off his coat and cracking his knuckles. Then, the Skrull realizes how screwed he is.
    • Ultimate FF: When they first got into the alien dome. Tony had threw up inside his helmet.
    • At the end of Age of Ultron, the skies over Ultimate Marvel New York go wonky and Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) Miles Morales goes to check it out... and finds the main universe Galactus looming overhead
  • Planet Killer: Gah-Lak-Tus, which goes around killing planets filled with organic lifeforms out of Fantastic Racism.
  • Posthumous Character: Wolverine died in Ultimatum. He appears in Ultimate Wolverine, but only in flashbacks.
  • Professor Guinea Pig
    • Norman Osbourne tried to replicate on himself the accident that gave powers to Peter Parker. He became a monster instead, the Green Goblin.
    • Bruce Banner tried to recreate the super-soldier serum that created Captain America some decades ago. He became another monster, the Hulk.
    • A scientist from Weapon X also experimented on himself, and turned into... something.
    • Tony Stark was a successful case. He has a fleet of nanobots in his bloodstream, invented by himself, which help him to use the armor.
  • Race Lift:
    • Samuel L. Jackson allowed the artists to use his likeness for the formerly white Nick Fury in exchange for getting to play Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
    • There are a lot of other examples. The Wasp was Asian-American, Ben Reilly and the Vision are black (though the former is not a clone of Spider-Man in this continuity), Hurricane was North Korean, Crimson Dynamo, and the Abomination were Chinese, Abigail Brand is Ambiguously Brown.
  • Red Herring
    • Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk introduced the Ultimate Marvel version of She-Hulk in a Cliffhanger after having earlier introduced Jen Walters (She-Hulk's alter ego in the mainstream Marvel Universe) in a brief supporting role. This turned out to be a misdirect, as the Ultimate She-Hulk was later revealed to be Betty Ross.
    • Early on in The Ultimates 3, there's an ominous close-up of Hawkeye while he's talking about how something needs to be done about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch before the media can find out about their incestuous relationship. This was obviously meant to imply that Scarlet Witch's killer was Hawkeye instead of Ultron.
    • Ultimate FF: The discussion between Coulson and Machine Man, about the man to send to help the team. If you thought they were talking about Reed Richards, you were wrong: they were talking about Victor Van Damme.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Both averted and played straight.note  In the case of Ultimate Fantastic Four, it is played straight, as the military refuses to let Richards release his revolutionary inventions to the market; his frustration turns him into The Maker, a Visionary Villain who thinks that Utopia Justifies the Means. On the other hand, part of Xavier's plans to make mutants accepted is based precisely on them using their powers to provide actual and tangible help, and not just fighting villains (Jean helps people with mental disorders, Storm brings rain to dry places, etc.)
    • Averted extremely hard in his second appearance as The Maker, where the story and art go to great pains to take Richards' powers to their logical conclusion. He is very rarely seen in regular humanoid form, instead of being more of a stretchy vaguely-humanoid mess, using his elasticity and high intellect to form hundreds of hands, wrap entire objects in sheets of himself, or even create entire copies of himself from small still-connected parts. He points out to Sue that as a result of his powers he does not eat, breathe, or sleep, and is technically not even really alive, and as a result, is pretty much impossible to permanently destroy. He also uses his intellect to essentially achieve world peace and a technological utopia within 24 hours of escaping from prison, even if he has to kill and oppress a bunch of people to do it. Richards' powers become scary when he goes insane and isn't afraid to use them to his full potential.
  • Refusal of the Call
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) has Peter Parker mimicking his mainstream counterpart and the results thereof. The second Spider-Man, Miles Morales, refused to do anything with his powers; when Peter died, Miles figured that if he'd embraced his powers earlier, he might have brought aid to New York's hero, since their powers were connected. He decides to make up for it by filling the gap Peter left.
    • Ultimate Origins: Nick Fury may have the super-soldier serum in his veins, but he's not Captain America, and will never be. He thinks that Captain America is meant to be an icon, a symbol of the best American virtues, and he does not consider himself worthy of any of that.
    • Jimmy's blood has traces of the original Mothervine, and may help to remake the mutant race. Jimmy wants nothing to do with that.
  • Related in the Adaptation: In the comics, Morbius and Dr. Doom have no connections to Count Dracula or each other. Here, Morbius is Vlad's brother and Doom is a descendant of Dracula.
  • Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: Ultimate Marvel was an imprint that took a serious, dark, more grounded, and down-to-earth approach to the Marvel mythos. The Ultimates (the local version of The Avengers) fought against Hulk during a destructive rampage very similar to 9/11, and then against an alien invasion of the Chitauri, aliens that used to work with the nazis. Peter Parker died fighting against the Green Goblin, and Miles Morales became the new Spider-Man. Reed Richards, who started as a hero with the Fantastic Four, becomes a villain who would establish his technocratic society by any means necessary, including the destruction of Berlin, the genocide of all the Asgardians, and the infinity gauntlets. Galactus comes from the prime reality and almost destroyed the whole planet. But the imprint started to decrease in sales after almost a decade and was closed during the Secret Wars crossover, where Dr. Doom saved the multiverse from destruction and remade in his image. In Ultimate FF #5, one of the last issues of the Ultimate Marvel before the closure, all the serious tone is thrown to the window, and we have a visit of Miles Morhames, the Ultimate Spider-Ham (an anthropomorphic pig with Morales' Spider suit), who comes from an alternate universe "similar" to the ultimate one. The thing is so bizarre, that it goes beyond description. Let's hear Morhames's own description of his home reality.
    Miles Morhames: From what we learned, your world and ours are the same. Mostly. We were invaded by the Chiuauatari, and defended by the Ultipets. Our Peter Porker died heroically, just as yours. Mooster Fantastic, Hulk-Bunny, Quacksilver, and your, Dr. Storm as Kangaroo the Conqueror tried to take over the world. And then him. Galactypus. He's the beginning of the end. He's why I'm here. (talking to Sue Storm) I've seen what will happen a thousand times. Your relationship with Ben Grizzly will end, painfully, and then you will fall in love with him: Duck-tor Doom. As the rifts got worse, Doom hatched a plan, something that would remake the universe using his feeble powers. It was supposed to kill billions, but save millions. I thought Simian Storm just couldn't live with that. But love for Doom blinded her, and our universe paid the price
  • Revisiting the Roots: From time to time, an element that was changed for the adaption, suddenly tilts back to the way it was (or is) in the regular Marvel Universe. For example, the Avengers began as a group of super-powered agents of SHIELD, and stayed that way for the first two arcs... and at the end of the second, they are a group of superheroes working on their own, financed by the wealth of Tony Stark (precisely their usual status in the Marvel Universe, at least before the contemporary Civil War). The Scarlet Witch donned her classic suit, Thor is shown to actually be a god from Asgard and not just a lunatic, and some topics that were initially avoided for being too fantastic (such as aliens and time-travel) finally got their space.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge
    • The Ultimates: Hawkeye goes on an especially inspiring one after his wife and kids are murdered and he is taken captive by a black ops team sent by Black Widow. As part of his escape he kills his guards with the fingernails he's torn off his own fingertips via his effectively superhuman ability to use anything as a lethal projectile. After killing an additional squad sent to subdue him, he takes their guns, grins into the security camera, and tells the rest of the base, "Run."
    • Ultimate Marvel re-introduced the Ghost Rider, distilling his origin as he and his lover Roxanne were innocents killed as human sacrifices, so the perpetrators could bargain for power from Mephisto. As it turns out, Ultimate Johnny Blaze sold his soul to Mephisto, too. All so Roxanne could be spared the suffering, and Johnny could hunt and kill the monsters that did this to them. Just one problem: One of the sacrificers is now the U.S. vice-president.
    • All-New Ultimates: Bombshell got one after getting rid of Diamondback's control, as she killed her boyfriend.
  • Second American Civil War: A Second Civil War breaks out after Washington D.C is destroyed by a villain known as The Maker with the most liberal and conservative states starting to either fight each other or declare their independence from the Union.
  • Sequel Hook
    • At the end of Spider-Men, Peter makes it back to his own universe and starts wondering if his dimension has a Miles Morales (the new Ultimate Spidey). We don't see the results of his web search (until Spider-Men II, that is), but Peter is stunned.
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Quicksilver, laying in a hospital bed, is recruited by someone for something. To be continued in... Ultimates: Disassembled!
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): After everything is said and done, and the Professor is relaxing at home with Jean, he mentions that he hopes that Nightcrawler will return someday, and they can be all under the same roof with Magneto and the others. Magneto? Did he just say Magneto?? Don't fall asleep now, professor!
  • Serial Escalation: The first half of the Ultimate universe introduces the characters, groups, locations, powers, context, etc. Everything slowly, taking the required time to explore the meaning and consequences of each one of those things. The team-ups also started small, just a couple of heroes at a time. But, by the second half, when everything has been set up, the real fun begins. Hickman's Ultimates and Spencer's X-Men are packed with non-stop action from beginning to end.
  • Shout-Out: The British Iron Man tech in Ultimate Armor Wars is suspiciously reminiscent of a certain Halo protagonist.
  • Skewed Priorities:
    • Ultimate Origins: The president wants a real super soldier, not just a good soldier in a visible suit. To get a military advantage over the enemy? No: because "this is a war of images".
    • The Ultimates: Captain America has been found, and he's somehow still alive. Nick Fury is glad because it will be a great addition to the Ultimates program... and Tony because he has the trademark rights.
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Nick Fury arrives in New Dehli, ready for a top-secret spy mission... and the first thing he asks is "Does anyone knows any good Indian restaurants around here?"
  • The Smurfette Principle
    • The original line-up of The Ultimates is the same one of the Avengers, mentioned above. But Wasp's was not alone for long, as Black Widow and Scarlet Witch join after the first arc. By Ultimates 3, there's also Valkyrie.
    • Ultimate FF: Sue is the only woman of the team. At one point, when Tony and Sam are unconscious and she's the only one still standing, she thinks that she should have organized an Amazon Brigade instead.
  • Spiritual Crossover: At one point Marvel and DC had a special type of crossover in mind: one character of each company would be stranded, for a year, in the universe of the other company, that would use it for a year as they saw fit. The project fell into Development Hell and was never done. So Marvel did it on their own: at the turn of the century, they had the Ultimate Marvel universe and the Supreme Power universe (an Ultimate Universe of the Squadron Supreme, and so based on DC Comics to some degree). There was a crossover between both in "Ultimate Power", and after it, Nick Fury was moved to the Supreme Power universe and Zarda to the Ultimate Marvel one.
  • There Are No Global Consequences: Averted, and in spades. In fact, one of the greatest distinctive traits of Ultimate Marvel is that the existence of superheroes, supervillains, superhero fights and the like have a profound impact on domestic politics, international relations, social rights movements, military, science, and almost any field you care to consider.
  • This Cannot Be!
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Wolverine didn't really expect to see Magda ever again.
    • Ultimate FF: Ben Grimm had killed Dr. Doom back in Ultimatum, as he was the villain that kickstarted it all. Now, he's back. He had been trapped in an alternate universe the whole time (as seen in the ending of an earlier adventure); the villain that was involved with the Ultimatum wave and that Grimm killed was someone posing as him during his absence. Ben Grimm simply does not accept that he unknowingly killed Mary Storm, the mother of his girlfriend.
  • Time Skip
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) Volume 3 has a one-year time skip between #22 and #23 after Rio Morales dies.
    • Ultimate FF: Sue gets pregnant in Issue #5. Issue #6 takes place nine months later (no wonder why).
  • Toilet Humor: Two separate jokes are made, with ambiguous seriousness, that the Thing and the Blob are both capable of flatulence with earth-shaking strength.
  • Trigger Phrase
  • The Tooth Hurts
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2000), Doctor Octopus pulls out one of Peter's teeth with his tentacle over four panels.
    • Ultimate FF: Back in the Zombieverse, zombie Luke Cage tried to bite Van Damme, whose body is pure steel. He broke all his teeth by trying that.
  • Ultimate Universe: Trope Namer and one of the better-known examples.
  • Undefeatable Little Village: Seeking the supersoldier Frank Simpson, Captain America seeks the hidden village of Saloth, in Vietnam. He finds it, but there are no adult men: just children, women and elders. One of those elders told cap that he's not the first big and strong guy who shows up giving orders, but that they defeated all the previous ones and used them to feed the pigs. Cap ignored him as a senile folk... and then discovers the secret: the children, women and elders are all super soldiers.
  • The Unmasqued World: Unlike the Prime earth, which always had superhumans around, Captain America is the first superhuman evernote . All other superhumans are, one way or the other, a consequence of that breakthrough. Even mutants.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight
    • Ultimate Origins: Watchers begin popping up all over Earth. One lands right in front of Logan, and he doesn't even stop drinking his beer.
    • Ultimate FF: Rick Jones is the only one to be properly surprised of talking with a pig-man. All the others have Seen It All.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man (2000): There was a huge explosion in Oscorp, and none of the high school students seems to even know about it. They had been there a pair of weeks ago, Harry could have died, but no.
  • Your Approval Fills Me with Shame
    • Ultimate FF: When attacked by the Atlanteans, Iron Man proposes to alter some chemicals to make a dangerous gas. Doom said "You'll kill them all! Doom approves"
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Jean saved Wraith from Wolverine, but he should not even think for a moment to say "thank you", or she'll fill his brain with nightmares.
  • Weird Historical War: World War II featured Super Soldiers, Frankenstein Monsters (later known as "mutants"), Alien invaders and other Aliens watching the whole thing.
  • World of Jerkass: Almost every known superhero has turned into an Adaptational Jerkass in one way or another, with some getting the outright Adaptational Villainy treatment. Spider-Man is one of the few heroes who was still a Nice Guy, so much so that he was almost the Big Good of that universe, and he spends most of his time Lampshading how everyone is a total asshole:
    Peter Parker: I mean, this is what I have to look forward to when I grow up? People being just...jerks.

Post-Secret Wars tropes

  • Aborted Arc: The Maker also manifested his interest to recreate his universe in Ghost-Spider (2019). Alas, the comic was canceled and that subplot was left hanging. However, when he returned, his plan was changed from trying to recreate it to just finding the restored one that appeared in Spider-Men II.
  • And the Adventure Continues: Spider-Men II revealed that Peter, the Ultimates and their universe are alive and well. In their last scene, Peter and Jessica were swinging off to another adventure.
  • The Cameo: Spider-Verse vol. 3 included two cameos of Ultimate Spider-Woman, amid a multitude of characters.
  • The Constant: Thor's hammer survived the multiversal destruction and fell in the 616 universe. It was featured in "Unworthy Thor", then became the hammer of the War Thor.
  • Heroic BSoD: The Maker created perfect replicas of the Ultimates, down to the molecular level. So perfect that Pym froze when he remembered his death.
  • There's No Place Like Home: The Maker wanted to return to his home universe. All his relations with Eddie Brock, his symbiote, and his son were in order to get valuable information that would help him to achieve this goal.
  • Wham Shot: When the Maker finally returned to the Ultimate Universe, he found New York City in flames with multiple posters and screens desperately asking for the whereabouts of the Ultimates, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.
  • You Can't Go Home Again
    • Jimmy Hudson knows that he's from somewhere else, but can't return to his universe.
    • Subverted by the Maker. When he finally returns he finds a city in ruins, and all superheroes seem to be missing. For a moment it seemed he was about to collapse, but no: he considered that those circumstances could not be better.

Alternative Title(s): Ultimate Human

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